International Conference Regulating the Global Economy 18th and 19th December 2015

The College of Law and Criminology in association with Turku University

‘Regulating the Global Economy’

International conference, Council Chamber, 18 and 19 December 2015

There is a danger that we are entering an era of retrenchment and fragmentation of globalization. In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, regulating the global economy rather than continuing the laissez faire approach has become a necessity. Regulation here is understood broadly, in the sense of nontax, noncriminal public law where public bodies issue and enforce directives (Matthew Adler). The remit of global economy regulation exceeds the traditional trade law in goods and services to encompass areas such as financial markets and investment, antitrust, energy, and possibly also fiscal and monetary matters. This is arguably a matter of growing consensus among scholars. Consensus remains elusive, however, on the structure of such regulation.

The conference will analytically elucidate this structure at this point. Three elements of such regulation will be considered in particular, the drivers, the modalities, and the normative parameters, as well as their connection. Each raises critical questions. Of the drivers of global economic regulation, the questions to be explored here concern, within and without the OECD, the deep rationales underlying each state’s stance and the international cooperation of states on regulation. For actually achieving global economic regulation, there is a gamut of modalities that frame the choices that regulators have to achieve agreed outcomes. Such modalities comprise various instruments and institutions. Thirdly, as regulation progresses in practice, the impact it has on the meta-level becomes more visible. The conference will consider its transformative effect on democracy towards multilevel governance and on the normative objectives, in particular legitimacy of decision-making and global social justice. The conference will test the structural insights gained by applying them to selected reference areas of the global economy. A concluding integrative panel will review the development of the drivers-instruments-normative template and its application across sectors.